Curculio.—The subject of this play, turns on a recognition similar to that which occurs in the Cistellaria. It derives its title from the name of a parasite, who performs the part usually assigned by Plautus to an intriguing slave; and he is called Curculio, from a species of worm which eats through corn.
It is worthy of observation, that in the fourth act of this play, the Choragus, who was master of the Chorus, and stage-manager, or leader of the band, is introduced, expressing his fear lest he should be deprived of the clothes he had lent to Curculio, and addressing to the spectators a number of satirical remarks on Roman manners.
Vossius has noticed the inadvertency or ignorance of Plautus in this drama, where, though the scene is laid in Epidaurus, he sends the parasite to Caria, and brings him back in four days. This part of the comedy he therefore thinks has been invented by Plautus himself, since a Greek poet, to whom the geography of these districts must have been better known, would not have carried the parasite to so great a distance in so short a period.
Epidicus.—This play is so called from the name of a slave who sustains a principal character in the comedy, and on whose rogueries most of the incidents depend. Its most serious part consists in the discovery of a damsel, who proves to be sister to a young man by whom she has been purchased as a slave. The play has no prologue; but, at the beginning, a character is introduced, which the ancients called persona protatica,—that is, a person who enters only once, and at the commencement of the piece, for the sake of unfolding the argument, and does not appear again in any part of the drama. Such are Sosia, in the Andria of Terence, and Davus, in his Phormio. This is accounted rather an inartificial mode of informing the audience of the circumstances previous to the opening of the piece. It is generally too evident, that the narrative is made merely for the sake of the spectators; as there seldom appears a sufficient reason for one of the parties being so communicative to the other. Such explanations should come round, as it were, by accident, or be drawn involuntarily from the characters themselves in the course of the action.
The Epidicus is said to have been a principal favourite of [pg 129]the author himself; and, indeed, one of the characters in his Bacchides exclaims,
“Etiam Epidicum, quam ego fabulam æque ac me ipsum amo.”
But, though popular in the ancient theatre, the Epidicus does not appear to be one of the plays of Plautus which has been most frequently imitated on the modern stage. There was, however, a very early Italian imitation of it in the Emilia, a comedy of Luigi da Groto, better known by the appellation of Cieco D’Adria, one of the earliest romantic poets of his country. The trick, too, of Epidicus, in persuading his master to buy a slave with whom his son was in love, has suggested the first device fallen on by Mascarelle, the valet in Moliere’s Etourdi, in order to place the female slave Celie at the disposal of her lover, by inducing his master to purchase her.
Menæchmi—hinges on something of the same species of humour as the Amphitryon—a doubt and confusion with regard to the identity of individuals. According to the Delphin Plautus, it was taken from a lost play of Menander, entitled Διδυμοι; but other commentators have thought, that it was more probably derived from Epicharmus, or some other Sicilian dramatist.
In this play, a merchant of Syracuse had two sons, possessing so strong a personal resemblance to each other, that they could not be distinguished even by their parents. One of these children, called Menæchmus, was lost by his father in a crowd on the streets of Syracuse, and, being found by a Greek merchant, was carried by him to Epidamnum, (Dyracchium,) and adopted as his son. Meanwhile the brother, (whose name, in consequence of this loss, had been changed to Menæchmus,) having grown up, had set out from Syracuse in quest of his relative. After a long search he arrived at Epidamnum, where his brother had by this time married, and had also succeeded to the merchant’s fortune. The amusement of the piece hinges on the citizens of Epidamnum mistaking the Syracusan stranger for his brother, and the family of the Epidamnian brother falling into a corresponding error. In this comedy we have also the everlasting parasite; and the first act opens with a preparation for an entertainment, which Menæchmus of Epidamnum had ordered for his mistress Erotium, and to which the parasite was invited. The Syracusan happening to pass, is asked to come in by his brother’s mistress, and partakes with her of the feast. He also receives from her, in order to bear it to the embroiderer’s, a robe which his brother had carried off from his wife, with the view of presenting it to this [pg 130]mistress. Afterwards he is attacked by his brother’s jealous wife, and her father; and, as his answers to their reproaches convince them that he is deranged, they send straightway for a physician. The Syracusan escapes; but they soon afterwards lay hold of the Epidamnian, in order to carry him to the physician’s house, when the servant of the Syracusan, who mistakes him for his master, rescues him from their hands. The Epidamnian then goes to his mistress with the view of persuading her to return the robe to his wife. At length the whole is unravelled by the two Menæchmi meeting; when the servant of the Syracusan, surprised at their resemblance, discovers, after a few questions to each, that Menæchmus of Epidamnum is the twin-brother of whom his master had been so long in search, and who now agrees to return with them to Syracuse.
The great number of those Latin plays, where the merriment consists in mistakes arising from personal resemblances, must be attributed to the use of masks, which gave probability to such dramas; and yet, if the resemblance was too perfect, the humour, I think, must have lost its effect, as the spectators would not readily perceive the error that was committed.